Not Embarrassed to Go Soft

Now I’m not all that concerned with healthy eating. I mean, I try to eat my veggies and whole grains, but it’s not as if I don’t cook with oil or butter. And I certainly don’t avoid egg yolks. Certainly never. But I do have to say that this *new* way of cooking eggs is a nod to cutting some fat out of my egg routine. I mean, it is the time of year for cute clothes and over eating and I need to prepare properly (plus I just bought these suction-cup black skinny jeans that make me think I can NEVER eat again. Fuck!)

Well, I obviously can’t take credit for this style of egg, it’s just new to me, although I’m not sure how often I’ll be soft boiling eggs. I like the hands-off concept: place an egg in boiling water, let it steep for 7 minutes, immerse it in an ice bath, peel the shell, eat. I followed these directions. My only issue was peeling the shell. I’d say it’s fairly difficult to peel hard boiled eggs. Sometimes, if you are able to slide your finger under the membrane, it can be a breeze. But if not, chunks of egg can come off.

With soft boiled eggs, it’s that much more difficult to peel because the whole egg is very soft. There’s no give. So you have to kind of cradle the egg while trying to seduce it’s clothes off. I was fairly successful, only piercing the egg while trying to take off the final section of shell. But I can tell you, I immediately missed the taste of butter on the egg that comes with my usual method of frying it. But I did enjoy the challenge of a new way of cooking my favorite food. I’ll try poaching, froaching and baking eggs soon.

I served the soft boiled egg with African whole wheat toast, schmeared with cream cheese and topped with some of the last tomatoes from DAD GANSIE’s late blooming garden.

I’ve never seen a soft-boiled egg entirely out of its shell before. When I was a child, my Welsh grandmother often made me soft-boiled eggs in the classic British Nursery Food style. She’d boil the eggs for three minutes, put the egg (shell and all) into an egg cup so it could stand upright, and then she’d cut off the top of the egg shell. (I’m not sure how she did this. Perhaps with a butter knife, or the side of a spoon?) The egg would always be accompanied by “toast soldiers,” buttered wheat toast cut into 3/4″ strips, which I’d dip into the soft eggy deliciousness. I loved those.

I grew up eating soft boiled, it was my favoritest style of egg ever (until I discovered fried sunny side up). I should give that a whirl again this weekend… anyway, I have a trick to peeling eggs, hard or soft, but I can’t explain it in writing. Cuz I’m too lazy. Glad to see you’re feeling better.

Oh, and this is insane, but I’m partially blaming you, I dreamed about egg yolks last night (it was a poached egg… but… there was an incident… that left me ready to slap my sister in my dream)

Um, in the dream, we were at a restaurant, and I guess we all ordered the house specialty which was soup or ramen or some bowl of something… we each got served but the special part was that with the soup/bowl, a separate plate was served that had, at evenly spaced intervals and off set from each other, a poached egg. Three of them total (I have a brother, though I don’t recall who the third diner was), and I passed the plate around, the third diner took their egg, and then I passed the plate to my sister, who took her egg, and I was really looking forward to my egg, and as I was taking the plate from her, she said “Oh,” and put her soup spoon into the egg somehow and took the entire yolk (it’s a dream, I don’t know, but there was white left on the plate). In the dream, my jaw dropped open and I just watched her in horror and disbelief as she ate the egg yolk or mixed it into her soup or something and when I began yelling at her, WTF? why would you do that?! she looked at me and told me I don’t like egg yolks. It was really aggravating, in fact just thinking about it is annoying me. I’m going to email her right now to tell her about the dream.

Part of it probably stems from an incident when I was about 13 or so. We went out to eat Vietnamese food and were eating big bowls of *bun* (the cold noodle “salad” bowls) and I was talking, had my spoon poised in mid-air and she reached over with her chopsticks and plucked a pickled shallot (I think that’s what it is) from my spoon and ate it. It was the last one in my bowl; they usually gave only 2-3 pieces, and I LOVE that veggie, so I began screaming and complaining and I was really, really angry. I still am actually – who the F* DOES THAT?!?!?!?! She was like, you weren’t eating it, and I was all, HELLO, it was in my SPOON to EAT it?! and… yeah. So my dad bought me an entire jar but the jarred kind never taste the same as the kind at the restaurant…

Well, I’m the youngest, if that explains anything at all, lol. She gives me plenty and isn’t a bad sister, mostly (obviously we have our moments), but that left a lasting impression on me. And I REALLY wanted to mix that egg into my soup for some reason.
BTW, have you ever had “soondubu”? It’s a Korean tofu soup thing, you crack a raw egg into the bowl when it’s served. The bowl is this stone bowl affair that I’m sure they heat on the stovetop or in the oven because it’s screaming hot and you can’t touch it, and the soup is bubbling viciously when they serve it, so it gets cooked immediately, but my dream with the egg-mixing-into-soup kind of reminded me of that.

You need an egg cup and a soft boiled egg cutter to take off the top. Next, spoon out the egg and put it on the plate. An easier way is to make coddled eggs if you have an egg coddler. Butter the inside, crack an egg into the coddler, add a dot of butter and a touch of cream, then screw on the lid and put the coddler into boiling hot water, turn off the heat, and let it sit for about 10 minutes. Presto! a soft “boiled” buttery egg with no shell.

The secret to being able to peel eggs easily: Use eggs that are old. Fresh eggs — and from the looks of your picture, you’ve got a farm fresh egg with a nice orangy-yellow yolk — do not peel easily. If you have the patience, let your supermarket eggs sit in the fridge for at least a week before hard-boiling or soft-boiling. If you’re getting eggs from a farmer’s market, you’d have to let them sit in the fridge at least a month in order for the membranes to deteriorate enough to make it easy to peel.

CookieJanuary 26, 2012

Made this for me and my mom, It is YUMMY! I’m so writing this down in the recipe book! 😀